


sentiment's the same, but the pair of feet change

by quitehamish



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, M/M, Minor Character Death, My First AO3 Post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 21:10:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2040306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quitehamish/pseuds/quitehamish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of John and Sherlock's story, pieced together through cups of coffee. </p><p>(Title from "Coffee" by Sylvan Esso.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sentiment's the same, but the pair of feet change

**Author's Note:**

> Not betaed, nor britpicked. Just something that wouldn't stop bouncing around my head at night.

Occasionally Sherlock gets the coffee. And by occasionally, John means thrice in all the time he has known the man. Four times if you count the incident in which Sherlock knowingly slipped him a powerful hallucinogenic of unknown origin, and John is _not_ counting that incident.

 ***

The first time, they have known each other for three days. John texts a murderer, chases down a taxi cab, and kills a bad man. Sherlock’s honest smile is illuminated by flashing lights and the orange blanket makes his cheeks look pinker than they really are and the next morning there are two styrofoam cups from Speedy’s on the desk.

 _Thanks for saving my life_ , they say, words John doesn’t ever expect to hear out loud from Sherlock. (Three days is time enough to know this.) John sips the milkier coffee and walks the other over to the couch, where Sherlock is sprawled out, pretending that he wasn’t watching him. 

”Don’t expect me to always be around to save you now.” John hands the cup to Sherlock and doesn’t let their fingers touch, eyes the lower end of the couch where a pair of pale, bony, equally untouchable feet take up too much room.

”Don’t expect me to get the coffee.”

But Sherlock draws his knees up. Makes room.

 ***

The second time, Sherlock is bleeding from the nose and John shakes in a cheap linoleum chair. When Sherlock turns his back to order at the counter, John lets himself look. (Never touch.) Thinks about the same body crumpled and broken at the bottom of Bart’s, thinks about blood on the concrete, blood on the Belstaff, on his hands.

The coffee is grey and lukewarm and only Mary drinks hers. She peers at them over the lid, eyes wide, like their tragedy is a fucking tennis match. Sherlock looks like shit but he’s treating it all like a joke and John can’t focus on anything but the drop of blood trickling down Sherlock’s philtrum, painting the exaggerated bow of his upper lip. John hits him again, just to stop seeing red.

 ***

The third time, everyone else has gone. Four people in the room and two of them are laid in caskets, one impossibly small. John isn’t speaking right now, is rearranging the information in his mind ( _dead, not dead anymore, dead, dead, he wishes he were dead_ ), so Sherlock pours out the last of the funeral home’s shitty brew. He fits the cup into John’s motionless hands and doesn’t expect him to drink it. Just wants him to feel warm for once.

Sherlock sits down and when he leans over, John meets him halfway. Lets Sherlock insinuate his nose into the crook between his neck and shoulder. Discards his coffee and lays a warm hand on Sherlock’s neck; touches, finally touches.

”Thanks.” John’s voice is thick, is wet coffee grounds clogging well-oiled machinery.

”Least I can do,” Sherlock mumbles into skin. He smells like oak and flowers, but dark roast too, and John feels like he’s thawing out.

”Not the coffee, idiot.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come play on tumblr--my url is aborteddeclarationoflove :)


End file.
